angry, frustrated girl with hands in her hair screaming – isolated on white

Something happened the other day that I want to share with you.

I’ve always had a problem with anger. I thought anger was bad and wouldn’t allow myself to feel it most of my life. I grew up repressing my anger. I don’t do that anymore, yet I’ve got to tell you that when I get REALLY angry—you know like at life’s big injustices, not just because my daughter’s room is a disaster (always), but real things that matter—well then, sometimes I don’t know what to do with the intensity of it. Usually I end up crying at some point.

I know. We all have our issues.

So, the other day I was looking at some posts online and I kept getting angrier and angrier. I used a few of the techniques that I teach to put on my observer hat and see if I was being personally triggered. There was a little bit of that and I’ll explain that in a minute, but most of it was the anger I feel when women are allowing themselves to be robbed of their worth and dignity.

You might think this is stupid. Or you might think I’m nuts. Or you just might not even get it at all. That’s ok.

You’ve probably heard me rant against diet culture numerous times and for good reason. It’s EVERYWHERE and so much of it we don’t even recognize as such because we are so inside of it ALL the time. But a particular one “before and after” just got me.

The first shot was a beautiful mother (by any standard) in her bikini a few months after giving birth. She had a tummy, because well, SHE HAD JUST RECENTLY GIVEN BIRTH TO ANOTHER WHOLE HUMAN BEING, but otherwise she was pretty slim.

The next shot is of her in her bikini looking pretty ripped. You can tell she is the kind who likes to grind at the gym—that’s all good.

But the “copy” about how much her body and energy had changed by using this product since she had a baby made me guffaw at first. No duh, she’s tired she has a newborn at home to take care of! You think she’s low on energy? And you think that “months later” with more sleep and everything else she needs she might be feeling a little better?

But that isn’t what really got me mad. It was the idea behind it that there was SOMETHING WRONG with her post-pregnancy body. That she “needed” to get it “back into shape” because, God forbid she have a stomach where a HUMAN BEING WAS GROWING FOR 9 MONTHS!

To me this completely devalues a woman’s fertility and the amazing miracle that motherhood is. Instead of celebrating that, the focus was on getting her abs ripped again. Because you know, you don’t really have any value as a woman unless you look like a fitness model.

Now, I’ve never had the honor of giving birth and I’m not suggesting that motherhood makes you a “true” woman or anything like that.

“But Michelle,” my sister told me later. “I get that. I felt that pressure after I had given birth. You totally buy into it and you don’t realize how wrong it is. That mother doesn’t realize, she doesn’t even think the way you do about it.”

Hmmm. That doesn’t make me feel any better.

I’m telling you this story because I am fiercely dedicated to our freedom as women. And I’m determined to take as many of you with me that I can on that liberation journey.

I think we need to do something to change this devaluing of women and our bodies. At the very least, stop using women who had just given birth as the “BAD” BEFORE picture! I don’t get how other women aren’t seeing that as completely offensive. Instead, they complement the gal on losing weight and how “good” she looks now that you can’t tell her body had a baby.

We don’t even see how warped that is. We need freedom to be in our bodies however they are and to celebrate them for however they are!

But it seems most of us are trapped.

If you want more body freedom, I invite you to come along side some other brave women in my brand new group program. What would it be like for you to unravel the stories our culture tells us, so you can be confident in who you are in your body as a woman? When you start to put attention on this, I can show you how to dismantle those bad body thoughts and start to live from an empowered state of mind, in tune with your body’s intelligence. Freedom, in this case, is a state of mind.

I’ve written all about the Body Freedom Formula on this page and it just might be the perfect thing for you right now. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out by replying to this email. I’d love to have you join us.

Love,

Michelle

PS. We have moved our first BLE Monthly Community Call to next Monday, mainly because it’s more convenient for one of my partner’s in crime. You see, Friday seems to interfere with her date night! Our topic will be Surviving the Holidays with Grace & Sanity, plus Q&A. Hope you can join in the conversation.

Like this:

So accustomed are we to talking about ourselves with a razor-sharp tongue that we forget to spare a kind word every now and again. When we speak negatively about ourselves we are only perpetuating an already toxic culture and advocating the negative sense of self that so many of us have come to learn. Do we not have enough unfavourable body conversation thrown at us by the media, by advertisements, by social media popularity, by trolls and bullies? Why do we feel the need to continue with the barrage of insults when in the privacy of our own minds? This bombardment that we receive every day is enough to make even the most confident of people have a crisis of self-esteem: if the media isn’t commenting on our bodies, then it is focusing on our hair, our faces, our gender and sexuality, our eating and exercising habits. So how is…